A2LL
Encyclopedia
A2LL is the abbreviation of the German social services and unemployment software system
"Arbeitslosengeld II – Leistungen zum Lebensunterhalt“ (Unemployment money II - subsistence payments). This eGovernment
process was to help combine unemployment insurance and welfare, but has instead become one of the many difficulties associated with the Hartz IV reforms in Germany.
, the software division of the former German state telecommunications company, and ProSoz, with a team of 30 developers, in the town of Herten
. The software, which was delivered late in the last quarter of 2004, went live on January 1, 2005. It is now only maintained by T-Systems, since ProSoz left the consortium in May 2005, allegedly due to being on the brink of bankruptcy, (according to the local paper "Hertener Allgemeinen").
The system is based on 16 server
s with 4 processor
s each, all running Linux
. A Tomcat servlet container defines the graphical user interface
. A web services framework
from the Systinet company, uses a server farm of approximately 200 Windows 2003 servers which run the application server developed by ProSoz. The application server was developed using Microsoft
's (D)COM
technology and uses an Informix 9.4x database running on a Solaris machine containing 80 CPUs
and a 300 GB
Cache-RAM.
, Hamburg
, Frankfurt
and Berlin
on October 18, 2004. Other towns followed on October 21, although only 20% of the end user stations were permitted to use the system, to keep it from going down. More and more stations were soon added to the system, but there were many problems with the extremely slow response and data entry times. Staff in the social services agencies had to work overtime to get as much data into the system as possible before the start.
On December 23, 2004, the system had 2.6 million households registered and the FINAS booking system was prepared to send out 1.3 billion euros to accounts across the nation on January 1.
The first major error was found during the first payment - account numbers which were shorter than the standard 10 digits were filled up with zeros on the end instead of the beginning (i.e., 1234567 became 1234567000 instead of the correct 0001234567). The banks could not process the payments and thus had to be credited to fragment accounts until they could be sorted out. Due to the massive number of mistakes, the banks had to invest much effort into locating the owners, and the government had to issue emergency cash so that people could buy food.
As a quick fix the system switched to printing checks (not normally used in German financial transactions), but since the field for the street name chosen was too small, many of the checks could not be delivered to the intended recipients.
The software house ProSoz, a wholly owed subsidiary of the city of Herten, was on the brink of bankruptcy and resigned from the consortium. T-Systems hired the programmers from the company.
Even six months after the start of the system, there were many needed features of the system that could not be used. For example, neither an analysis of variance
nor a list of persons who had received too much money could be printed. The printing of documents was not flexible enough to fit many local situations. New legal rules for deducting current income from small jobs could not be completed in time for the official start of the system on October 1, 2005.
In July 2005 it was discovered that the system could not cope with one-time payments, for example so that schoolchildren could purchase books; consequently, this feature was disabled entirely. A few days later it was discovered that the system was not registering people properly with their insurance companies, causing enormous administrative headaches for the insurance providers.
In September 2005 the German press reported that the system had been transferring 25 million euros too much per month to the insurance providers. This meant that they could not calculate the new, lower insurance rate that was mandated to save the government money. According to press reports, an expert committee had determined the software to be non-maintainable and non-adaptable and was considering a completely new software system, just 9 months after it had gone into operation.
"Arbeitslosengeld II – Leistungen zum Lebensunterhalt“ (Unemployment money II - subsistence payments). This eGovernment
EGovernment
E-Government is digital interactions between a government and citizens , government and businesses/Commerce , government and employees , and also between government and governments /agencies...
process was to help combine unemployment insurance and welfare, but has instead become one of the many difficulties associated with the Hartz IV reforms in Germany.
Development
A2LL was first developed by a consortium of T-SystemsT-Systems
T-Systems is a worldwide operating ICT provider founded in October 2000. It belongs to Deutsche Telekom AG and its central office is located in Bonn, Germany. Within Deutsche Telekom AG it is responsible for multinational corporations and public-sector institutions. It operates in more than 20...
, the software division of the former German state telecommunications company, and ProSoz, with a team of 30 developers, in the town of Herten
Herten
Herten is a town and a municipality in the district of Recklinghausen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated in the industrial Ruhr Area, approx...
. The software, which was delivered late in the last quarter of 2004, went live on January 1, 2005. It is now only maintained by T-Systems, since ProSoz left the consortium in May 2005, allegedly due to being on the brink of bankruptcy, (according to the local paper "Hertener Allgemeinen").
Technology
The software is used in the social services offices through a web browser interface using secure communication. Administrative changes are only possible by direct access to the system via intranet of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit - the social services agency responsible for administrating welfare.The system is based on 16 server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
s with 4 processor
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
s each, all running Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. A Tomcat servlet container defines the graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
. A web services framework
Software framework
In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by user code, thus providing application specific software...
from the Systinet company, uses a server farm of approximately 200 Windows 2003 servers which run the application server developed by ProSoz. The application server was developed using Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's (D)COM
Distributed component object model
Distributed Component Object Model is a proprietary Microsoft technology for communication among software components distributed across networked computers. DCOM, which originally was called "Network OLE", extends Microsoft's COM, and provides the communication substrate under Microsoft's COM+...
technology and uses an Informix 9.4x database running on a Solaris machine containing 80 CPUs
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
and a 300 GB
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
Cache-RAM.
History
The software was delivered to large German cities such as CologneCologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
on October 18, 2004. Other towns followed on October 21, although only 20% of the end user stations were permitted to use the system, to keep it from going down. More and more stations were soon added to the system, but there were many problems with the extremely slow response and data entry times. Staff in the social services agencies had to work overtime to get as much data into the system as possible before the start.
On December 23, 2004, the system had 2.6 million households registered and the FINAS booking system was prepared to send out 1.3 billion euros to accounts across the nation on January 1.
The first major error was found during the first payment - account numbers which were shorter than the standard 10 digits were filled up with zeros on the end instead of the beginning (i.e., 1234567 became 1234567000 instead of the correct 0001234567). The banks could not process the payments and thus had to be credited to fragment accounts until they could be sorted out. Due to the massive number of mistakes, the banks had to invest much effort into locating the owners, and the government had to issue emergency cash so that people could buy food.
As a quick fix the system switched to printing checks (not normally used in German financial transactions), but since the field for the street name chosen was too small, many of the checks could not be delivered to the intended recipients.
The software house ProSoz, a wholly owed subsidiary of the city of Herten, was on the brink of bankruptcy and resigned from the consortium. T-Systems hired the programmers from the company.
Even six months after the start of the system, there were many needed features of the system that could not be used. For example, neither an analysis of variance
Analysis of variance
In statistics, analysis of variance is a collection of statistical models, and their associated procedures, in which the observed variance in a particular variable is partitioned into components attributable to different sources of variation...
nor a list of persons who had received too much money could be printed. The printing of documents was not flexible enough to fit many local situations. New legal rules for deducting current income from small jobs could not be completed in time for the official start of the system on October 1, 2005.
In July 2005 it was discovered that the system could not cope with one-time payments, for example so that schoolchildren could purchase books; consequently, this feature was disabled entirely. A few days later it was discovered that the system was not registering people properly with their insurance companies, causing enormous administrative headaches for the insurance providers.
In September 2005 the German press reported that the system had been transferring 25 million euros too much per month to the insurance providers. This meant that they could not calculate the new, lower insurance rate that was mandated to save the government money. According to press reports, an expert committee had determined the software to be non-maintainable and non-adaptable and was considering a completely new software system, just 9 months after it had gone into operation.
External links
- Comp.risks: 23.53 23.60 23.92
- Article about the start of A2LL (in German)
- Article serie about the software errors (in German)
- Articles on insurance overpayment in Spiegel magazine http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,372998,00.html, Tagesschau http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID4712732_REF2,00.html, and Tagesspiegel http://archiv.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/06.09.2005/2035255.asp (in German)
- Hartz IV Information (in German)
- Arbeitslosengeld II - ALG II Detailed information about A2LL (in German) - with forum